Cofty,
I also want to add the following:
People who have been deceived by those who pretended to be God’s friends would prefer to talk about materialism.
However, I have never been deceived by any falsely called friends of God—hence I see a prism as prism, not as colored by the things behind the prism. Materialism cannot satisfy everyone because humans are not satisfied by mere survival. Survival is what animals seek; man is more than animal; man seeks freedom, pleasure,
art, ingenuity, ….. and on and on. Moreover, he has thirsts for justice and unconditional love—which cannot be fulfilled by any amount of material accomplishments. Superficial though, Spinoza called it confused thought. Make a list of all your pleasures. Then, maybe you’ll see even farther than Spinoza saw: pleasure (happiness) is just a signal telling you that you and the species are surviving; pain is signal that tells you to avoid further/future harm which of course is a mechanism that serves a good purpose.
Even death serves a good purpose. Ecclesiasticus 14:12, 13 says “remembering death enables one to perform good acts.” This fact has been discerned by many people such as Steve Jobs (the Father of the Digital Revolution & the cofounder of APPLE) declared: “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
Just because you were bitten by a dog on your way, why stop the journey? Try big picture—everything will fall in place.